


Pogrom

by tredecaphobia



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-11
Updated: 2012-07-11
Packaged: 2017-11-09 16:10:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tredecaphobia/pseuds/tredecaphobia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Istanbul Pogrom started at exactly five-o-clock. And Greece had been caught completely unawares for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pogrom

Greece always found it slightly odd (or, perhaps a better word would be uncanny), that they, countries and symbols in their own rights, would be heavily suspect to symbolism. It couldn’t be helped, perhaps; after all, their people were their beating hearts, the mass movements and exodus of populations their bodily shifts, the economic triumphs and downfalls their breath and heat and wellness, the chosen leaders also their own leaders.

And with symbolism, Greece often found, was a good deal of irony; he had lived most of his life with this irony (numb-lipped and shivering, and hoping he would die as his lands were ransacked by marauding Turks, until he felt his peoples spirit die, until he felt his body claimed by steeled, gloved hands; and it was ironic, he thought, that the once greatest nation in the world, and her legacy, would be so reduced), had come to expect it and accept it. He didn’t mind that pop psychology had moved on into the languages of Germany and France (déjà vu, another one, and Greece laughed, or at least tried), because, honestly, the groundwork had all been laid before him, and for the others, and they all had to live with it. Or try to, at least.

But wherever he went, no matter the time, Greece found he was always haunted by some ghost or another from the past, hanging weightily on the situation and choking the occupants therein with something like regret.

So, Greece supposed, he should have expected it. But, truly, who expects the ghost of a former life, of a former time, to appear, whole and unchanged, on your doorstep. It is a common theme in the Balkan states that alcohol brings out the worst in a man (Greece laughs, a little weakly this time, upon realizing the root of the word, and chokes a little on the snot, tears, and blood at the perfect irony of the situation), preys on men like a demon lusting for dead flesh. Greece has long since known that alcohol brings out the Ottoman in Turkey.

Turkey had found him at precisely five-o-clock, before the sun had begun its sultry afterglow in the streets of Istanbul and Herakles could honestly say he had been completely unawares. Seeing the man had been hardly unusual (they lived right next to each other, and thus impossible to ignore successfully) and he washere on Turkey’s land visiting, but several things had clicked into the back of the youth’s mind, which would only later make sense.

Standing, with his head tipped back (it was a common pose for Turkey, after having imbibed too much, and Herakles felt instantly wary), with what was exposed of his face mirroring such perfect anguish and rage that Greece felt himself still so suddenly the involuntariness startled him. And then, in rapid succession, before everything dissolved (the world crumbling around him in a haze of red, wetness, and that awful, choking sensation of irony), the stench of liquor, the involuntary weaving as the man fought for balance, and the eerily clear eyes (he wasn’t maybe as drunk as he appeared, but drunk enough to give him an edge). And then Turkey saw him.

“Ah. Allah.” He said, and his voice cracked with his own heartache, before he started forward, hands extended, and his face the sudden, passive imperiousness Herakles had come to dread with the same sort of second nature small children feared the dark. “You fucking brat. I’m going to fucking murderyou.”

There were plenty of reasons for Turkey to hate him (Greece wouldn’t even be able to use fingers for the task), but none of them seemed to be able to incite this sort of reaction, and his mind frantically screamed for a solution as the man bore down on him. All he could do, really, was to stand stock still (you’re a man in your own right now, you’ve bee recognized as a nation, this man can’t hurt you like he used to; Greece would later laugh at the irony these thoughts really had, because the Ottoman in Turkey was never dead) when the man descended upon him, hands (god, they seemed too large, like he was shaking on silk bedsheets again), shaking Herakles with a deceptive gentleness.

“Whyd’dyou gotta do it, eh? Why? Why?” And Annan had been shaking him gently until he had rather screamed the last one, and his hands wrapped, with that awful familiarity, around Herakles’ throat.

And there was no distinguishing, after that, the pain one blow brought form he next, because they rained down in an indistinguishable blur, and it didn’t matter what Herakles tried to use in the sudden maelstrom of the street around him (a garden hoe presented itself, and Herakles aimed that, first, in a crushing blow against Annan’s shoulder, which he didn’t feel, or else Herakles had missed, and in either case didn’t matter, because the man was still coming at him), the man seemed to be in an unstoppable rage, shouting invectives so well remembered it was as if Herakles was shrinking from the man in his harem.

And it was like falling back into an old routine, really, when the man struck him hard enough to stun him, finally, and he was knocked quite thoroughly, into a shop where Greek split the air like lightening, and Turkey was over him, tearing at his trousers (“Youse a fucking man, now, eh? We gonna see how much of a fucking man you are, you little prick.”) until he was bare from his waist to his knees, and Turkey was seizing his genitals, removing his own penis from his trousers, speaking still at that elevated monotone of rage.

It was a sight altogether too recognizable to Herakles, who tipped his head back, still seeing sparks of electricity in a miasma of black and red, trying to avoid this as much as possible, until the man spoke again, growling and grabbing the youth’s hair. “Fucking look, you little prick.” And Herakles had to look, at the man who was hard and exposed, and crouched between the youth’s naked, spread legs, at the bare head of the man’s cock, which made this all the more relevant, especially in conjunction with the man’s whispered words (“That’s the fucking difference between you an’ me, fucking brat.”), and his fingers against the tip of Herakles’ own member, sliding the skin. When Turkey removed the knife with a viper-quickness from his boot, Herakles felt his heart skip and his vision grey, and all he choke out was a sort of plea (“Nn-o!” His breath hitching as the tip of the blade bit into the skin around the head of his cock.) before the man started to put the blade to use.

Pain meshed synesthesiacally with the roar of the night around them, simultaneously deafening and silent and drowning out entirely his shrieks, and in the downwards swirl, Herakles might have found something awful and familiar in the way Annan licked the blade clean, and positioned himself and made that first, terrible thrust that buckled Herakles’ back and rent a cry from him, high and childish.

“Whaddyou cryin’ for?” His words were breathless and cruel with the thrusts, and his eyes glittered past the mask, and his mouth curled at the look of blatant defiance Greece gave him (as best he could, past the blood he felt pooling in the socket, the crackling his jaw made every time it moved, the blood running from between his legs). And with a sudden, wild look, Turkey’s fingers closed upon the cross that lay exposed on the youth’s chest, giving the pendant a vicious yank so the chain snapped, and he held it, clenched in his hand before leaning down again.

There was a crippling familiarity in the way he repositioned himself so that he was laying atop the youth, and Herakles felt suddenly very small again, though his legs easily looped up past the man’s shoulders, and the voice he heard, distantly, cry out again and again was deep, roughened in brutality. There was no difference in Turkey (no, the Empire, or what remained of him), rutting against him, with a raw cry when he finally spent himself on the youth.

He couldn’t stop a gritting keen when Turkey withdrew, and, examining his handiwork, tapped the boy’s face lightly with his blooded hands. “Good boy.” And even as Herakles slipped backwards, as blood loss and shock started to underwhelm his system, the only words he could convince to leave his lips were those of bile and hate (and not the very pertinent question of Why?), and the only face he saw was the last remnant of a weighty ghost.

* * * 

Perhaps it was due to his prone position on a hospital bed and the fact he had been left rather mutilated by the previous nights events, Greece could not convince himself to believe the words leaving his leader’s mouth; it seemed simply ludicrous to ignore what had been done. And though he felt a certain vindication in the man’s shrinking gaze every time his eyes dropped onto his own nation in the hospital bed (his face swollen and bandaged, blood already seeping through the dressings between Herakles’ legs), the message rang flat and hollow, about international ties and different times, and the desire to make friends.

He stopped listening to the dithering after a while, and simply fell asleep, opting instead to heal since he would not have revenge. It wasn’t so different, after all, than the last five hundred years had been, and the attack had occurred while he was on Turkey’s land. So, he slept.

He thought, after half-waking some time later, however, there was a promise in the way Turkey had buried his face in the hospital bed next to Greece’s legs, hands clutching the sheets, and wept as though his heart were breaking.

**Author's Note:**

> *“Alcohol” is actually a mainly Arabic word- the root of it being “ghoul”. Turns people to flesh-eating desert demons. Pretty accurate.
> 
> *The Istanbul Pogrom, a highly controversial subject, was kicked off due to rumors of Greeks igniting the house Ataturk was born in; these rumors later proved to be false, the fire having been set by Turkish activists. There’s a huge, convoluted story behind this, and I encourage you to wiki it. It’s pretty crazy.
> 
> *Another reason for the Pogrom was said to be repercussions for the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Weird, cause this is in 1955. It feels like, sometimes, Turkey can never quite be free from the shadow of its past. 
> 
> *The resistance members were rather outmatched; the majority were boys, armed with domestic tools. Among what happened to the Greek citizens of Istanbul were both women and men were raped, men were forcibly circumcised, businesses and churches destroyed.
> 
> *Despite what happened, there was very little reaction from either country’s leader; being just after WWII, there was a strong desire to continue building ties between the two nations, so the event went past relatively unnoticed.
> 
> *They really were trying to get along, though, especially in the aftermath of the war. So I can imagine Turkey being pretty mortified at his behavior.
> 
> *Too many notes, I know.


End file.
